US Bombs Out of Germany

April 18, 2024 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Two More U.S. Peace Activists Win Jail Time in Germany

By Jack Cohen-Joppa

After court, Dennis DuVall and other activists returned to the nuclear weapons base and placed a 28-foot-long copy of the nuclear ban treaty across the access road. Photo: Sjaak Tensen

Two American nuclear abolitionists will soon serve time in German prisons for their nonviolent actions opposing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiled at Germany’s Büchel air base.

Susan Crane, age 80, was sentenced in September, 2022 for a series of fence-cutting actions and occupations of the Büchel base beginning in 2018, and ordered to pay a fine equivalent to 229 days in prison. Crane, a Catholic Worker in Redwood City, California, refused to pay, and was notified by the court to report to prison in Germany on June 4.

After sentencing, Crane said, “When I look at Büchel air base, I see nothing but the organization of death … At the same time, I see the suffering of people around the world who lack basic needs that could be met if our economies weren’t based on war-making. … [I]f we are to continue life on this planet, we need to disarm.”

Meanwhile, Dennis DuVall, who already served a 60-day sentence in the spring of 2023 for protests at Büchel, was back in a German court on January 22, coincidentally also the third anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The 82-year-old Vietnam War veteran, now living in Germany, was charged for the “Atom Bomb Crime Scene” graffiti he’d painted in hot pink across the base’s entrance road last summer.

Despite DuVall’s clear and calm defense that he acted to expose criminal preparations for mass murder, he was sentenced to a fine equal to 90 days in prison. Like Crane, he told the court he will not pay, and expects to eventually be sent back to prison.

Supporter Frits ter Kuile wrote, “It was a sad display. An elder man warning with great clarity for the End of Time in his own end time and those blind figures in their black gowns standing on the wrong side of history for the umpteenth time.”

January 18, 2024 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

European Court of Human Rights May Hear Appeals of Nuclear Weapons Protest Convictions

By John LaForge

German and U.S. nuclear weapons resisters continue their quixotic jousting match with the criminal justice system. Emphasis on the word criminal.

After dozens of “go-in” actions against the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons at Germany’s Büchel air base, and following scores of trial court convictions for “trespassing” at the NATO base, twenty individual appeals to Germany’s high-level Constitutional Court have now been rejected without comment. The high court has simply upheld the rulings of the Regional Court in Koblenz finding the resisters guilty. Koblenz judges have repeatedly found that secret arrangements between the U.S. and Germany have legalized the shipment to and deployment of U.S. nuclear bombs at Büchel.

Nuclear abolitionists, including Nukewatch’s John LaForge and many others, have argued that binding U.S. and German treaty law forbids any and all such transfer of nuclear weapons (known as nuclear proliferation), and consequently that nonviolent actions attempting to interfere with such violations are justifiable acts of “crime prevention.”

As of September, a total of six nuclear resisters have filed applications or appeals with the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France, arguing that the convictions were in error. The ECHR, made up of 42 judges, one from every state party to the European Convention on Human Rights, has a rigid set of standards to be met to win a hearing, and defendants must first have exhausted all the means of redress in their state and federal courts.

A sleeping “Madame Justice” was “woken up” by protesters before Germany’s Constitutional Court.

In LaForge’s appeal to the ECHR, filed in May, the court has indicated some interest in the case, but has not yet formally decided to hear it. In June, the court wrote that one signature and one document were missing from the application. “Normally this would mean that your application would be rejected,” the court said. “However, in view of the particular circumstances of the case, you are requested, on an exceptional basis, to complete your file” and supply the needed information by August 7.

After receiving the required materials, the Legal Secretary wrote on October 9, “The court will deal with the case … as soon as the course of business permits.”

In late September, John joined German anti-nuclear bicyclists in a public protest ride between the two high courts. Beginning with a rally at the doors of the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany, sixteen riders spent two days cycling to Strasbourg and the gates of the ECHR, just across the Rhine River border separating Germany and France.

In front of both court complexes, group members spoke of the increasing dangers and legal nihilism of nuclear sharing, and a small troupe performed a theatrical piece called “Wake Up Justice!” in which a sleepy, inattentive “Madame Justice,” portrayed by Lies Welker (pictured outside the Constitutional Court), was woken by the shouts and cries of citizens demanding that she do something about the threats to humanity posed by the nuclear war planners.

October 23, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Wake Up Justice!” Protest Rallies Aimed at Court Inaction

By John LaForge

In honor of the United Nations International Day for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (September 26), Germany’s nationwide campaign Büchel is Everywhere! Nuclear Weapons-Free Now! will stage protest actions outside the offices of high-level courts that have made or will soon make decisions regarding nuclear weapons protest cases challenging the practice of U.S. “nuclear sharing” in Europe.

Nukewatch will participate in the events as part of the campaign to see U.S. nuclear weapons withdrawn from Europe.

The first “Wake Up Justice!” action is set for Friday, Sept. 22, 2023, in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the seat of Germany’s Constitutional Court, its highest. On 20 separate occasions the high court has refused to issue an opinion explaining its dismissal of appeals by nuclear resisters who’ve objected to their convictions in lower courts over nonviolent “go-in” protest actions.

In Karlsruhe, participants plan on a rally and some irreverent street theater characterizing the Constitutional Court as a silent protector of the nuclear weapons establishment and a co-conspirator in deliberate violation of the 1970 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

Additionally, a civil lawsuit brought by a local resident living near Büchel airbase which argued that nuclear sharing unlawfully endangers her and the whole region by making it a target, was also rejected by the Constitutional Court.

Following the Karlsruhe protest events, campaigners will set out Sept. 23 on a climate neutral 62-mile bicycle delegation across the border to Strasbourg, France and the seat of the European Court of Human Rights. A rally will take place there Monday September 25.
Binding international law ignored by courts

For 30 years, peace activists have organized protests aimed at the U.S. bombs in Büchel demanding that they be withdrawn, have repeatedly resorted to nonviolent interventions, and have sometimes faced prosecution. The long campaign has seen twenty nuclear abolitionists file Constitutional Court complaints (appeals) against the U.S. weapons at “Fliegerhorst Büchel” arguing in part that the foreign stationing of nuclear weapons there violates their human and civil rights and is prohibited by the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Because Germany’s high court has upheld trial court convictions of nonviolent resisters without explaining its reasons, five activists have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. They have argued that their convictions were in error under Article 6 of ECHR Charter on the grounds that trial court judges unfairly refused to consider testimony from expert witnesses. Article 103 of Germany’s Basic Law also guarantees the right to a fair trial.

Even after 18 months, the first two appellants to the ECHR have yet to hear whether the court will consider their appeal.

These high courts are obligated to recognize and comply with treaty law above all other statutes, and the activists and their attorneys have provided the judges an opportunity to finally rule on the legal status of nuclear sharing.

The “Wake Up Justice” events are partly an alarm bell to alert the German and European courts to the issue, especially in view of the increased nuclear risks brought on by the war in Ukraine.

October 23, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Democracy Now! Interviews Nukewatch

By John LaForge

Democracy Now! put Nukewatch on the air for the first time on August 10, tying together protest stories from the Netherlands and Germany, with host Amy Goodman announcing: “Ten peace activists were arrested on the runway of [a Dutch] air base in the Netherlands, where 15 U.S. nuclear bombs are stockpiled for NATO’s so-called ‘nuclear sharing’ program. The action came on the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ll speak with John LaForge, co-director of Nukewatch, who just served a 50-day sentence in Germany for protesting U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at an air base there.” In a prompt for the report, LaForge said, “We take the Pentagon’s threatened use of nuclear weapons, known as ‘deterrence,’ very seriously, because, under law, this ongoing, credible, and well-rehearsed readiness to attack people with hydrogen bombs is an international criminal conspiracy to commit massacres using radiation and firestorms.”

Goodman interviewed Susan Crane, the Plowshares activist and Catholic Worker from California, and then asked LaForge to explain the protests.

He said in part, “We argued in trial that the stationing or the transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons to Germany is an unlawful act, a violation of Articles I and II of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. … We argued the case that nuclear weapons, their components and their delivery systems, in Germany and everywhere, are principally just instruments of international criminal activity, repudiated and prohibited, by international law, including and especially the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg judgment and the Nuremberg principles.”

— Democracy Now! online at: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/10/nuclear_protests_netherlands

October 20, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

NATO’s Steadfast Noon, is Ready-Made Doom

A U.S. B61 free-fall gravity bomb inside a bunker alongside a German Tornado fighter jet on Büchel Air Force Base, Germany.

By John La Forge, October 20, 2023

On October 16, during the NATO-supplied, nuclear-armed hot war in Ukraine, the alliance began its annual nuclear attack rehearsal dubbed “Steadfast Noon.” This practice involves air forces from 13 countries, the “exercising” of fighter jets and U.S. B-52s, lasts until October 26, and will be roaring over Italy, Croatia and the eastern Mediterranean — not far from two aircraft carrier battle groups charging toward the war over the Gaza Strip prison break.

A hundred people joined an October 14 protest outside Germany’s Nörvenich Air Base calling for cancellation of the rehearsal, to no avail.

NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg naturally said, “Our exercise will help to ensure the credibility, effectiveness and security of our nuclear deterrent.” This is shrewd, silk tie talk about threatening nuclear attacks, threats barely distinguishable from Russia’s verbal warnings. Mr. Stoltenberg dared to add, “[T]he fundamental purpose of NATO’s nuclear capability is to preserve peace, prevent coercion and deter aggression.”

Aware that this fundamental purpose was disproved and vaporized by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO practices nuclear attacks. Steadfast Noon is a role-play for pilots, a dry run to test classroom preparations made at the German branch of the U.S. Air Force Nuclear College on Ramstein Air Base. According to the AFNC website, the school “is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters … every day.” Some such air-delivered nuclear weapons are the U.S. “B61” free-fall gravity bombs stationed in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey.

One Nuclear College course named “Theater Nuclear Operation” was described this way (before the page was taken down): “[A] 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting.” Another class is said to provide: “proficiency in importing and creating target models, developing attack plans using conventional or nuclear weapons, performing consequence assessment to WMD scenarios.”

If you imagined that nuclear war is unthinkable, this school says its fighter jet pilot students, “will be able to import, edit, and modify target sites”; “calculate probabilistic attacks against predefined targets; [and] “develop attack plans using either conventional or nuclear weapons.”

These B61s are just the U.S. nukes closest to Moscow. Add to these the French, British and U.S. thermonuclear weapons on submarines, long-range missiles, and bombers (totals are approximately 5244 U.S., 225 British, and 290 French).

At the protest in Nörvenich, Ludo De Brabander, from the Belgian peace group Peace Now, spoke of the 10 to 20 B61s stationed at Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium. “These bombs will soon be replaced by new B61-12 nuclear bombs,” he said. “Because of their ‘precision’ and ‘low yield,’ these nuclear weapons are considered ‘operational,’ lowering the threshold for nuclear war. All of this is happening without any official explanation or public debate.”

The concept of suicidal ideation applies to steadfast planning or the actual launch of nuclear weapons attacks. Daniel Ellsberg, in Things That Can and Cannot Be Said (Haymarket Books 2016), said, “[O]our private, top-secret estimates were that we would kill every European, a hundred million Europeans, without a single U.S. or Soviet warhead landing on West Europe. Just from the fallout of the attacks we were planning on Russia and East Europe. One hundred million.”

So Steadfast Noon is not just code language, or public relations. The event is a large-scale, psychological operation intended to teach us to pretend that nuclear attacks can do good. Of course if nuclear firestorms could save lives and end war — as U.S. mythology says of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki — then the Pentagon would have used them on Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. People love to be fooled.

— This was first published at CounterPunch: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/20/natos-steadfast-noon-is-ready-made-doom/

NATO’s Steadfast Noon, is Ready-Made Doom

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